Free Republic

Bangladesh bank offers loans to US poor By Daniel Pimlott in New York Published: February 15 2008 Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has made its first loans in New York in an attempt to bring its pioneering microfinance techniques to the tens of millions of people in the world’s richest country who have no bank account. The bank’s entry into the US, its first in a developed market, comes as mainstream banks’ credibility has been hit by the mortgage meltdown and many people are turning to fringe financial institutions offering loans at exorbitant interest rates.

The State Department doled out $13 million in grants for longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, according to federal records. The grants were provided in 18 separate transactions from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Bangladesh-based Grameen bank, according to a Sunday evening report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, for which Yunus served as a founding board member. Groups associated with Yunus through business relationships received an additional $11 million. Yunus oversaw the distribution of microcredit loans to impoverished borrowers for the bank for over 30 years....

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces arrested a suspected Turkish Al-Qaeda militant in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, a security official said on Sunday. The man, seized on Saturday, identified himself as Mohammad Yusuf and said he was a Turkish national, a security official said. The 25-year-old was apprehended when security forces stopped a vehicle at a check point at Shah Alam, five kms from Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan region, he said.Pakistan has deployed thousands of troops into the tribal areas to hunt down Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who crossed the border after Afghanistan's hardline...